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Back to Work

R. and I are just finishing up a long weekend away, spent in a very low-key way, if not exactly in a very low-key place, mostly holed up in a hotel working. I’ve gotten a good bit done — about two-thirds of my MLA presentation is now written (though it will need revising, no doubt, when that last third turns out to be twice as long as it ought to be), and I’ve done some reading I needed to do. It’s been a pretty blissful few days, in that regard, a brief flash of what it’s like to have an intellectual life that I have some kinds of control over.

Today, however, will be all about preparations for tomorrow: getting notes together for class, commenting on student work, and so forth. We’re into the home stretch now, with three more weeks of classes ahead of us. But in those three weeks there will also be four job candidate visits, plus advising and pre-registration for spring — oh, god, and then there’s spring, and I haven’t ordered my books yet, and…

I am trying not to feel the panic of time marching forward, trying to remember what these five days felt like, and further to remember that there are five weeks between finals and the start of next semester, and that I’ll have this kind of freedom to focus on my own work for the majority of that break. In the meantime, however, there’s other stuff to be done.